As the U.S. empire crumbles from both without and within, the main wing imperialists of the U.S. ruling class seem ready to crack down on the America First bosses fronted by Donald Trump. Equating the January 6 Capitol Building insurrection to 9/11, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the insurrection an assault from “within” (Guardian, 9/17), while former President George W. Bush urged Americans to confront “violent extremists at home” (Washington Post, 9/11).
Facing a still out-of-control Covid-19 pandemic, a military debacle in Afghanistan, and a collapsing infrastructure, these Big Fascist finance capitalists are wounded and desperate—which makes them even more dangerous. They’ve been unable to rein in the more openly racist Small Fascists, who have hijacked the Republican Party and the U.S. Supreme Court, and have made serious inroads in the rank-and-file military. They’ve been unwilling to discipline their own ranks of greedy billionaires. These divisions give inter-imperialist rivals China and Russia a huge opening. And with the mainwing U.S. rulers less and less able to govern by the old rules of liberal democracy, they’re moving faster than ever toward fascism and World War III.
As capitalists scramble to protect their profits, the working class is expected to pay the price, swallow the lies, and shed the blood. But Progressive Labor Party has other plans! We call on the international working class to reject the bosses’ call for patriotism—and to counter with communist internationalism. Join us and help eradicate the deadliest virus worldwide—capitalism!
Build Back Better: fraud on the working class
The Big Fascists’ dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power, its strategic control of the Middle East, and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. As they lose ground to China, both economically and militarily, the U.S. bosses need to win the patriotic loyalty of masses of workers to fight and die in the global conflict to come.
Enter Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” bill. With promises to fund greener energy, broadband, highways, housing, and new jobs, the proposal is essentially a bribe to win workers to support the Big Fascists’ agenda. What remains to be seen is whether the Biden-led bosses can summon the unity and discipline needed to pass the bill.
The Small Fascist Republicans have vowed to fight the tax hikes needed to fund Biden’s bill. But the Big Fascists’ main problem is that their own ranks are unwilling to make the needed sacrifices. Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, wants to scale down the package by half—and slow the transition to clean energy. It’s no coincidence that Manchin “has personally grossed more than $4.5 million” from the coal companies he founded in the 1980s (The Intercept, 9/3).
Leading mainstream business groups–the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers–have also pushed back against the corporate tax hikes (modest as they would be) that Biden and the main wing need to pay for the bill (Business Insider, 3/31).
This fight exposes the short-term thinking and lack of discipline within the ruling class. But no empire falls without a fight, and the liberal bosses are likely to move to more open fascism sooner than later. They have no choice—they must unify their own class to prepare for war.
War preparation
Biden’s plan also calls for $180 billion in new research and development for emerging technologies for the military. Without stepping up their investments and innovations for mass slaughter, the U.S. risks falling behind China and jeopardizing the bosses’ “future economic competitiveness and … national security” (C4ISRNET, 3/31). In a related development, the U.S. bosses made a deal to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, a clear “effort to reset the naval balance in the Pacific, as China expands its territorial claims and threatens Taiwan” (New York Times, 9/22). More broadly, the strengthening alliance known as “the Quad”—a coalition of the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan—“represents one of the most consequential challenges to Chinese ambitions in the years ahead” (foreignaffairs.com, 8/6).
But despite these attempts to “pivot” to Asia and block China’s dominance in the region, the U.S. ruling class is hobbled by division and disarray—a big factor in the accelerating decline of U.S. imperialism. More and more workers see U.S. society for what it truly is—a rotten stew of police murder, mass unemployment, and racist and sexist inequality. Capitalism will never work for workers. It cannot be fixed. The only alternative is communism, a world run by and for the international working class.
The Covid disaster
Covid-19 has been an utter disaster for the capitalist bosses and Exhibit A for why they are unfit to run society. With the Delta variant on the rampage and the pandemic death toll once again exceeding 2,000 a day, Big Fascist media like the New York Times are blaming Small Fascist Republican governors who have rejected mask mandates and other common-sense public health measures.
But the biggest problem for the finance capitalists is the incompetence and mixed messaging of their own institutions, like the Centers for Disease Control and the Food & Drug Administration, which have caved to political and business interests in “getting America back to work.” Meanwhile, liberal politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are recklessly pushing millions of students into crowded school buildings, less than fully vaccinated teaching staffs, and vague safety protocols (Chalkbeat 8/21, Pix11 8/19).
Vaccine and mask mandates represent the Big Fascists’ attempt to discipline their class and win workersbut the strategy isn’t working.  Without the staff or facilities for smaller classes, teachers and students know that social distancing rules are a joke. At the same time, many workers have been swayed by anti-science rhetoric as well as rightful mistrust in the government wand are refusing to get vaccinated.
As a result, the pandemic rages on. Millions of workers worldwide have lost their jobs and are facing homelessness, eviction, even starvation. Many lack even basic healthcare or access to testing or vaccines. The global pandemic is not a “natural” disaster. It is proof positive that capitalism must be smashed with communist revolution.
Great danger and opportunity
Under communism, workers would be ensured access to vaccines, treatment, and preventative health that would have contained the pandemic long before it killed millions around the globe. Without the profit motive, scientists would work for the betterment of humanity, rather than depending on corporate funding. Workers would take sick days without fear of losing their jobs or being unable to provide for their families. All workers –and healthcare workers most of all—would have the protective equipment they need to do their jobs safely.
As the capitalist world grows increasingly unstable, the working class is entering a period of great danger and opportunity. The danger is the threat of world war inching closer as the U.S. empire nears the brink of collapse. The opportunity is to smash this racist, sexist system and turn imperialist war into a class war for workers’ power. Capitalism is the true pandemic, and communism is the only cure. Join PLP and place another nail in the bosses’ coffin.

The swell of workers looking to enter the U.S. ,and take refuge below the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas has grown to more than 12,000 people (CNN.com 9/20). They are suffering from overcrowding, extreme heat, illness, lack of food and unsanitary conditions. The chaos of capitalism in crisis forces workers to flee for survival, and makes our lives ever more disposable. On both sides of the border workers suffer the brutality and incompetence of capitalism along with racism and a general disregard for the lives of workers. The terrifying photo of a border patrolman on horseback, whipping a rope while chasing down a Black worker from Haiti, along with the miserable conditions in the camps, evokes images of slavery and fascist internment. Only communism, a system based on the needs of the international working class, can abolish borders, and organize the world for the good of the masses of workers.
The migrant camp of Reynosa in Tamaulipas, Mexico across from Hidalgo, Texas, concentrates two to five thousand people with only 18 portable toilets. Workers are charged 10 pesos to use the showers and sinks (NYT, 8/30). The situation in Tijuana is more of the same. The workers in camps there have denounced the overcrowding and violence reporting extortion, theft, and kidnapping. Many have been sent back from the U.S. with their asylum paperwork in plastic envelopes. The missing laces in their shoes reveal their time at a deportation center making them easy marks for criminals who take them to “safe houses” until their relatives in the U.S. pay sums of up to $2,000 for their release (hrw.org, 6/2/2020). Without question, these conditions are inhumane.
Capitalism is criminal and anti-worker whether its lackeys are openly fascist and anti-immigrant like Donald Trump or liberals like Joe Biden or Mexican President  Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). Essentially, the increasingly fascist policies of capitalism in crisis condemn millions to die in poverty trying to cross the bosses borders.
The current situation at the border between Mexico and the U.S. began with an agreement between Trump and AMLO at the end of 2018. The government in Mexico agreed to the “Remain in Mexico” plan under pressure of a U.S. threat to increase taxes on goods imported from Mexico. Since then, Mexico agreed that workers from countries other than Mexico who had been stopped crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico would wait in Mexico while the U.S. courts evaluated their asylum petitions.
While Trump built support with his base by pushing anti-immigrant policies and the Democrats built support from their base by attacking Trump, the crisis of capitalism – exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the paralyzing divisions within the ruling class – has intensified. Even when businesses in the U.S. claim to lack workers and workers are traveling thousands of miles in search of employment, the capitalist class is incapable of overcoming their internal divisions even to satisfy their own interests, let alone the needs of the working class.
The horrors that migrant workers are facing are a consequence of the crisis of capitalism and a sign of fascism—the form that capitalism in crisis takes. The concentration of thousands of workers condemned to live and die in detention camps is reminiscent of fascism in the past and a glimpse of the future under this system. No capitalist government or political party can guarantee the needs of the working class. The situation facing workers at the border shows that in the face of crisis, capitalism resorts to fascism. Workers become disposable, left to live or die in squalor.
It is only because of working class solidarity that workers in the camps receive any support in the form of needed water and food, clothes, mattresses, medicine and tents big enough only to provide some protection from the rain and cold nights. Only the power of the working class, organized in a fight for communism will ever be able to provide for workers of the world.

INGLEWOOD, CA, September 17—A tenants’ rights group and other organizers learned one more real life lesson today. This vicious, capitalist system serves the billionaire rulers. The setting was a rally protesting a press conference held in conjunction with the “ground-breaking” for a new arena for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Billionaire Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, Inglewood Mayor James Butts and others celebrated the coming of one more gigantic stadium to this overwhelmingly Black and Latin working-class city. Meanwhile Inglewood cops were protecting both the press conference and shelter site being torn down a block over. Only communist revolution, where workers run society, can eliminate these racist cops and the billionaires who they serve and protect.
As with many other large cities, capitalism’s sports team owners and their billionaire banking and corporate backers have realized the profit potential of relocating these teams to brand new stadiums. In order to smooth the way for their profit-driven schemes, they have taken advantage of lousy living conditions for workers in these areas by promising thousands of new jobs. They have enlisted local politicians like Butts, many of them Black and Latin, who have enthusiastically become these projects’ biggest cheerleaders.
Communism: housing for all workers
A multiracial rally of 25 chanted, “Citizen, immigrant, Black, Brown, white: against displacement we will fight”, and “Stop racist gentrification, by corrupt corporations,”as scores of car horns blared in solidarity.
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member
active in the tenants union gave a speech,
targeting Ballmer, the capitalists and their profit system as the culprits behind the atrocity that we had just witnessed. He called for revolution as the only solution to gentrification, racism, displacement and homelessness. He pointed out the common interest between all workers—including homeowners, tenants, and the homeless—as he called for unity in the struggle.
Capitalist “sports/entertainment” bosses like Ballmer (net worth is $96.1 billion) are all part of the gang-up of cops, landlords, billionaires and bankers that plague our class. Communism will bulldoze these displacers. Housing will not be bought and sold as a commodity. We will produce housing collectively and provide it to all workers based on need. Join the PLP and the fight for communism today!
Workers denounce racist gentrification
The rally was led by young Latin workers and included a speech by a tenant from Inglewood Gardens (IG), an apartment complex across the street from the newly-opened LA Rams/Chargers So-Fi Stadium. So-Fi is less than a mile from where the Clippers’ “Dome” is going up. This tenant talked about the refusal of the IG slumlord owner to repair multiple lousy and dangerous conditions in the apartment where he and his wife live. He also called out the disregard from the Inglewood Code Enforcement (CE) unit. After he filed a complaint, a CE inspector called and told him they have “no power” to make the landlord fix any of the conditions, forcing the couple to continue to live in squalor.
Meanwhile the cops were supervising the displacement of yet one more homeless individual. We marched to where it was happening. The group loudly confronted the cops and demolition as everything the homeless person owned was thrown away. Knowing that this homeless person would later return to find all of their belongings gone, we demanded that the cops and city provide them with housing and services. They responded by simply driving away. Whether it’s cops or Code Enforcement inspectors, the government serves the ruling capitalists. They will forever fail to meet the needs of the working class; capitalism was built for profit, not the for security for our class.
Racist thiefs, not “job creators”
Inglewood became an industrial center during and after World War II, particularly for aerospace and military production. As factory bosses began moving these jobs out of the city in the 1960s, and 1970s, white workers also began moving out. The population of first Black, and later Latin workers, increased. Mass racist unemployment started increasing in the 1970s and 1980s. By 2000, Inglewood was 93 percent Black and Latin. Combined with deteriorating conditions in public schools and services due to massive, racist state budget cuts, conditions for workers became unbearable with poverty and homelessness.
Ballmer’s puppet politicians have touted the new stadiums as “job-creators.” But all of this new “development” has driven up property values and rents far beyond the reach of many workers, and attracted investment company vultures, which scoop up “distressed” properties and force out homeowners. In Inglewood, resistance to these anti-working class attacks has grown. The Lennox/Inglewood Tenants’ Union (LITU) has been one of the groups at the forefront.
PLP members in LITU have helped give political and tactical leadership to its campaigns, including organizing tenants at IG. In a very positive development, several tenant union members took the initiative to organize and help lead the rally today. This can be the stuff of what communism is made of—workers organizing every aspect of society. Organizers and antiracists in this struggle are welcomed to join PLP!

Langley Park, MD, Septermber 13–Obreros, unidos, jamas seren vencidos” rang out from the voices of 25 residents of Bedford Station, antiracist organizers, and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). “The workers united will never be defeated.”
The rally was against the racist development and rezoning plan for the new Purple Line transit rail. The rezoning plans will allow construction of exorbitant, high density buildings that will displace longtime residents, thousands of whom are immigrant workers from Central America. The liberal politicians here prove again that they are no friends of the working class.
The mainly-Latin residents (84 percent) have waged a yearlong rent strike and sued the landlords who are letting their homes deteriorate as they wait on a big payoff with new buildings. PLP members have joined them to present a petition to HUD (Housing and Urban Development) in Washington DC. We have helped individuals apply for emergency rent assistance, and have brought supporters along with art supplies, CHALLENGEs, and revolutionary enthusiasm to the rallies. Despite the bold sustained struggle by these workers, settling for reforms is a never-ending treadmill. Joining the revolutionary communist movement, the PLP, is a needed next step in the fight.
Drive for profit
The Purple Line is a 16-mile light rail line that will extend from Bethesda in Montgomery County to New Carrollton in Prince George's County. The private company that is building it has already sucked $3 million more than originally planned from the state budget. Negotiations with the state of Maryland have delayed construction but now the work is proceeding in earnest and developers are salivating to convince the County government to create new zoning regulations.
The draft regulations do not guarantee any affordable housing. The rent hikes will displace residents. Three residents who have been in these apartments for as long as 30 years explained how the zoning will affect them and their families. Nearby shopping areas and transportation will be dramatically changed for affluent new residents.
No safe place under capitalism
The wretched, racist conditions in Langley Park apartments were only worsened by the still-raging Covid-19 pandemic. Tenants had been complaining about old and decaying ceilings for years. One building was declared uninhabitable by the fire department. “When Covid-19 struck, many residents lost their jobs and couldn't make rent. At least 14 households [at one building] have received eviction notices” (NPR Station WAMU 88.5, 4/1). This is all under the Democratic Party leadership of county executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, a Black woman prosecutor. The liberal racists posture as the lesser evil when they function as the greater danger for working-class victory.
According to this local nonprofit, Langley Park has one of the highest concentrations of undocumented workers in the county. These workers tried to escape imperialist-induced horrors  in Central America only to be met with more racist disregard by the same bosses. The U.S.’s list of horrors includes dominating the economies to create more profits off of the super exploitation of workers, funding coups to oust governments that threaten their interest, maintaining sweatshop labor, and more. These racist conditions demonstrate there is no safe place under capitalism.
Limits of legislation
This nonprofit also organized to overturn Governor Hogan’s veto of new legislation that would have marginally helped community members. PL’ers discussed how the bosses’ legislative games keep people locked away from the need to build a revolutionary communist movement to eliminate capitalism and its pro-profit rules. As we increase our distribution of CHALLENGEs to residents, we bring our message to more and more workers.